Uranias 9th House

C-SPAN Video: Anti-War Protest at RNC 2008

Article: ACLU Calls for RNC Civil Liberties Investigation

Article: Peace Action Report

Article: UnLawful Arrests Continue

Q: What do you get when Venus, Mercury, Mars and the Moon line up in Libra?

A: A peace rally.

YouTube Video: DemocracyNow! Producer Nicole Salazar Arrested

YouTube Video: Journalist Amy Goodman Arrested

Q: And when Sun conjuncts Saturn in Virgo trine to retrograde Jupiter in Capricorn?

A: Discipline, determination and good judgement.

Q: And when Uranus in Pisces is in mutual reception to Neptune in Aquarius?

A: Hope for humanity.

Q: What do you get when you put this all together?

A: The hope of a secure and liveable world lies with the disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. — Martin Luther King

By Starhawk

Feel free to forward or repost this—thanks to all who have made calls already—it really helps! We got the convergence space reopened—but the raids continue!

New Moon Ritual
By Starhawk

This is how magic works:

We are gathered on sacred ground overlooking the Mississippi to celebrate the new moon and to begin this week of demonstrations and actions outside the Republican National Convention. We have an intention for the ritual, an intention the planners have been working with here in the Twin Cities for months: to court an upwelling of earth wisdom.

Magic, we say, is the art of changing consciousness at will—that’s Dion Fortune’s definition. Implicit in that is ‘art’, imagery, poetry, and we’ve been looking for the imagery that will embody our intention. The most powerful rituals are built around one clear image and one clear intention.

But we keep getting multiple images: webs, crystals, bedrock, surging water. The hurricane, roaring toward the Gulf, back toward New Orleans where many of us volunteered after Katrina. And dragons.

“Oh please Goddess not dragons!” I’m saying silently inside my own mind. “With or without dungeons—high wince factor. Overused. Disneyesque.” But dragons it is—protective Chinese dragons, ancient earth serpent powers, water dragons, fierce, fire-breathing guardians.

Many years ago, I had a friend who lived in a group house in San Francisco. He used to say that every collective needed a dragon who lived in the basement, someone really ill tempered who will emerge from time to time and drive off those people who come to visit for a night and end up staying for a month, eating up all your sweet pickle chips and losing your bicycle.

And so, when we do ritual in a public place, we always name some people as ‘dragons’, to guard the boundaries of the circle. This ritual coincides with the arrival of a group who has biked from a conference in Madison, Wisconsin all the way to the Twin Cities. Paul has contacted them, and asked them to be our dragons.

I am having a lot of trouble shifting my own consciousness as the ritual begins. It’s been a hard, tense day. All day we’ve been getting news that the police have been raiding houses, breaking down doors, arresting people, with or without warrants or warnings. We hold the morning meeting in a public park, because our Convergence Space has been raided and closed the night before. Someone says, “We’re a community that includes children—we can’t clear them out of their own living spaces. Remember if the police raid your space it’s important to have someone negotiate with them to get the children out.”

I am a tough person. I’ve been through a lot of these things and in spite of all my efforts to stay open I’ve grown something of my own protective scales. But those words pierce through them, and I find tears welling up in my eyes. It just hits me, that we’re standing here in the United States of America, in the liberal city of my birth, talking about how to protect children from armed police.

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September 03: Sun conjuncts Saturn in Virgo at the 12th degree. We get serious about the details of work, service and health.

September 04: Sun in Virgo trines retrograde Jupiter in Capricorn at the 13th degree. We are serious about preserving the old ways of doing things correctly. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

Nothing endures but change. — Heraclitus c. 540-c.480 BC, from “Diogenes Laertius” — Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. IX, sec. 8

Planetary Themes

The first week of September brings the seriously hard-working tone of Saturn conjunct Sun in Virgo on September 03 to give grounding to the airy Libra stellium of Venus, Mercury and Mars, along with another airy stellium in Aquarius comprised of retrograde Neptune, Chiron and the North Node of the Moon. Retrograde Neptune is sextiling retrograde Pluto in late Sagittarius, but Uranus in Pisces is squaring Pluto.

In public affairs, it is becoming obvious that the American public is once again being deceived concerning US international efforts at regime change.

Georgia now joins Iraq and Iran as nations that have been mischaracterized as needing US “humanitarian” military interventions to bring democracy to benighted areas of the world that just happen to have access to large oil reserves. The so-called New Cold War is proving to be the fraudulent and tragic segue between US political administrations whose politicians, both left and right, front for the oil companies.

Nevertheless, Venus in Libra rules this week so the general planetary mood is one of presently not feeling much pain, but rather enjoying the mellowing weather of the transition from summer into autumn and hoping for “change,” even though we know that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

The second week of September heats up the political debate between left and right factions of the US government with Jupiter in Capricorn squaring Mercury, Venus and Mars in Libra. Issues of fairness come into conflict with arguments favoring corporate growth that favors the executive suite over the factory floor. Towards the end of the week, retrograde Neptune in Aquarius trines the Libra stellium, creating a clarion call to a return to values of fairness.

Jupiter in Capricorn goes stationary direct on September 07, and Pluto in Sagittarius also goes stationary direct on September 08. It’s likely that on these two days, many American citizens will make up their minds as to how to vote on November 04 and their decisions will probably revolve around their own personal relationships to the growth of the corporate governing class at the expense of the working class and middle class, as well as to the last eight years the USA has passed through in regard to its policy of foreign military adventurism or “Full Spectrum Dominance” under the false flag of fighting foreign religious extremism.

The third week of September finds us still under the rulership of Venus in Libra involved in a stellium that includes Mars and Mercury trining the idealistic Aquarian trio of Chiron, Neptune and the North Node of the Moon. Retrograde Uranus in Pisces is backing out of its square to Pluto in Sagittarius, taking a bit of the edge off of the explosive urges to finalize the rule of philosophical and religious extremists, both domestically and abroad.

Jupiter in Capricorn trines Saturn in Virgo, so we are getting more of the facts straight concerning what to believe about our governments. The Pisces Full Moon on September 15 will have us separating fact from fantasy in our urges to have peace and giving us some realistic techniques for re-establishing governmental credibility in international circles.

The fourth week of September is marked by Venus’ entry into Scorpio on September 23, where she is in her detriment. The soft mood of peace and beauty moves into one of intensely passionate expression of affection that runs the risk of veering into jealousy or greed. Mars conjuncts Mercury in Libra on September 23, further indicating an argumentative tone in the air.

In addition, Mercury goes retrograde in Libra the next day on September 24 until October 15. Mercury leaves the retrograde zone on October 30. During this time frame, it would be wise to avoid getting into new relationships or signing contracts because the mind will have a tendency to fluctuate or to become imbalanced in trying to establish a new equilibrium for itself within changing conditions.

In the public arena, scandals and stories about spying (Mars moves into Scorpio on October 03) are likely to appear, but such stories may be lacking in substantial evidence, or be merely part of a campaign of political dirty tricks in a heated election season.

Nevertheless, in spite of the confusing social and political atmosphere, the New Moon in Libra at the seventh degree on September 29 has us planting fertile seeds of peace. As Studs Terkel, the great American historian of the working class has reminded us, “Hope dies last.”

Celestial Events

September 07: Jupiter goes stationary direct.
September 08: Pluto goes stationary direct. September 22: Sun enters Libra.
September 23: Venus enters Scorpio.
September 24: Mercury goes stationary retrograde.

Transits

August 27: Mercury in Virgo squares Pluto in Sagittarius at the 29th degree. Detailed information could be censored or distorted by intensely powerful propaganda.

August 28: Mercury enters Libra. Thought processes may become more balanced.

August 28: Venus in Virgo squares Pluto in Sagittarius at the 29th degree. Our love of order and propriety may be incompatible with an intense desire to do things in a big way.

August 30: Virgo New Moon: Sol conjuncts Luna in Virgo at the seventh degree. This is the best time to plant seeds for practical work and service in terms of being “healthy, wealthy and wise.”

Transits

August 17: Mercury in Virgo trines retrograde Jupiter in Capricorn at the 14th degree. Practical thinking is in harmony with traditional cultural structures and ethics.

August 18: Mars enters Libra. We may feel impelled to balance the scales and to make peace in some area that we deem to be in need of a peace activist.

August 20: Sun in Leo trines retrograde Pluto in Sagittarius at the 29th degree. Creative projects that have an important cultural message get a potent boost of generative energy that will seed the future.

August 21: Mercury conjuncts Venus in Virgo at the 19th degree. We are able to implement beautifully practical systems in the area of work and service at the degree of the September 11, 2007 solar eclipse. We now should be well able to organize ourselves in order to bring in the harvest of beautiful ideas in work and service.

August 22: Sun enters Virgo. The will to work in a practical and organized manner expresses itself.

August 23: Mercury in Virgo opposes retrograde Uranus in Pisces at the 22nd degree. Practical, organized thinking must be balanced with a slowly evolving, internalized spirtual awakening.

August 16: Aquarius Lunar Eclipse, 2008

The spiritual is parent of the practical. — Thomas Carlyle

Sol in Leo opposes Luna in Aquarius at the 25th degree. Neptune rules this lunar eclipse, so we are likely to feel that we are under the spell of Neptune in Aquarius in mutual reception to Uranus in Pisces. We may have idealistic dreams of ameliorating the human condition that seem to need grounding in the everyday workshop of the Virgo stellium of Saturn, Mercury and Venus.

Retrograde Jupiter in Capricorn is helping us to keep our daily routine stabilized in traditional philosophical sturctures that provide slow and steady material increase.

On the other hand, we could feel unsettled by an agitating t-square consisting of Mars at 29 Virgo opposed by retrograde Uranus at 22 Pisces, and also by retrograde Pluto at the apex of the t-square at 29 Sagittarius. To balance this t-square, we need to concentrate on the Gemini void, using Mercury energy to keep us thinking logically.

Since Mercury is grounded by Saturn and Venus in Virgo, we should be able to easily and beautifully reach for the common sense option in any situation approaching chaos or violence. It would be best to avoid situations where radical ideology based in attitudes of racial purity or ideological fundamentalism could be espoused, and to instead work carefully and steadily to nurture any emergent seeds of humanitarian creativity planted two weeks ago at the Leo New Moon.